In recent times, energy and electricity production from geothermal sources has increased. This is because no fossil fuel has to be used in geothermal power plants and usually pollution from such geothermal power plants is minimal.
In more recent times, it has been found that a number of geothermal power plants previously built designed to operate at a certain inlet steam pressure suffer from a decline in the geothermal resource flow rate and pressure. The reduction in power output due to the reduction in steam flow rate and pressure becomes increasingly worse since the steam ejectors that are part of the vacuum system are very sensitive to the motive steam pressures. Thus, any decrease in steam supply pressure causes a drastic reduction in the effectiveness of the non-condensable gases (NCG) removal system that consequently affects the power plant performance.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a new and improved method of and apparatus for increasing output a geothermal steam power plant wherein the disadvantages as outlined are reduced or substantially overcome.